If there really is a demon in the world, its name must be Adolf Hitler.
Born in 1889, the Austrian-German went from being a frustrated painter to the pinnacle of german power.
Then with Germany's powerful industrial capabilities, it devastated all of Europe and spread the flames of war all over the world.
If it weren't for the resilient Soviets who withstood German tanks, it's hard to imagine what the world would have become.
Fortunately, the Soviets did it.
The Red Army fighters began to counterattack from the desperate Stalingrad and pushed all the way back to the German capital Berlin.
Hitler watched all this, watched the dictatorship he had built being torn down by the heroic people, and felt resentment and helplessness in his heart, and Germany had nothing to do in the face of the Soviet offensive.
In the end, Hitler chose to commit suicide, which became a major part of the history of the world.
People wondered how this invincible demon had died.
Soldiers are under the city
The Battle of Stalingrad, which took place between 1942 and 1943, was a memorable and glorious moment in human civilization.
With about 5 million people fighting, the battle was the bloodiest and most brutal battle in recent history.
At the cost of 2 million casualties, the Soviet Union eliminated 1.5 million troops of Nazi Germany, achieved a decisive victory, turned the tide of World War II, and allowed Nazi Germany to turn from a four-sided attack to a shrinking defense.
With the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan went to war with the United States, and Nazi Germany, also an ally of the Axis powers, had to declare war on the United States on December 11, 1941.
Hitler began to face two formidable armies, the American Army and the Red Army, both at the same time.
On April 16, 1945, countless rocket launchers of the Red Army began bombarding German positions on the outskirts of Berlin, and the Battle of Berlin officially began.
At this time, Hitler was in the bunker under the German Chancellery, commanding the German army on the ground to fight, and he still had hope.
The nazi soldiers who believed in toughness were able to withstand the Soviet offensive and achieve the ultimate victory.
But the truth was not as he thought, and the combat effectiveness of the Soviet army was beyond his imagination.
In the street battles that captured Berlin, Soviet soldiers, together with thousands of tons of bombs and artillery units of the Air Force, concentrated their artillery bombardment with all their might, and occupied one block after another at an extremely rapid speed.
Ironically, the Soviets' rich experience in street warfare was honed by the Germans when they attacked Stalingrad.
On April 27, 1945, Soviet troops approached Hitler's hideout further, almost encircling two-thirds of Berlin.
Hitler still fantasized that the German Ninth Army would be able to meet the Twelfth Army, and then show its might and break through the Soviet encirclement.
However, a telegram from Keitel extinguished Hitler's hopes.
The Twelfth Army could not advance, the Ninth Army could not break through, and it was all over.
Before the end of the world
After reading Keitel's telegram, Hitler roared in the bunker.
He was angry that his orders were "unable to be carried out", and he was also angry at the fear of failure.
He knew that Nazi Germany was finished, and all that was left to consider was how to end the defeat to look decent.
On 28 April, news from Italy once again put enormous psychological pressure on Hitler:
The Italian dictator Mussolini was captured by the partisans and shot, and his body was hung upside down in the Market of Milan, along with the body of his mistress, and was reviled by thousands of people.
Mussolini was a close comrade of the Axis Powers with Hitler, and Hitler seemed to see what mussolini would look like after his death, so he began to plan suicide.
According to the testimony of Hitler's guards,
It was hard for the people in the bunker to imagine that Hitler would commit suicide, because he was a man of great suicidal aversion, and when Hitler heard that the mayor of Leipzig had committed suicide, he gave the evaluation of a "coward who evaded responsibility".
So when the young officers heard that Hitler was writing a suicide note, they even thought that it was Hitler's fear of being killed when he broke through with the army, and that he had to write down a "backup suicide note" in advance with the name of his successor who led Germany.
However, hitler was already considering ending his life with his own hands.
At that time, Hitler had two choices, one was to commit suicide with poison, the other was to commit suicide with bullets, and Hitler first considered poison.
Since the SS generals had disobeyed Hitler's orders several times, he no longer trusted the SS.
Instead, he sought help from the emergency hospital and found a professor to come to the bunker to verify whether the poison capsule handed to him by the SS doctor was really effective.
The way to verify this was to get Hitler's favorite pet, the Alsatian Shepherd Brondy, to eat poison.
Hitler witnessed the process with his dedicated dog trainer, and both men showed uneasiness and anguish at the sight of Bronday's tragic death.
But Hitler still did not stop the experiment, he watched his favorite pet being poisoned,
Proving the power of the poison, Hitler ordered the dog trainer to shoot and kill Brondy's four children.
In the few hours remaining, Hitler met with the people in the bunker and gave his secretaries a small bottle of poison each, apologizing for not being able to give them something better.
And in the bunkers, where Hitler could not see, people began to have a premonition that the end was coming, and everyone gave up a part of their humanity.
Everyone began to eat and drink freely, the relationship between men and women had never been so chaotic, and in this lively banquet atmosphere, the dead silence spread.
Suicide by drinking bullets
Before officially committing suicide, Hitler and his mistress, Eva Braun, were married at midnight.
Eva met Hitler, who was 25 years her senior at the age of 17, and she had strong ambitions and purpose, attracted Hitler's attention through suicide attempts, and forced Hitler to begin to care for herself, and the two subsequently became lovers.
Most of the outside world's views on Eva are that she is nothing more than a woman with clever means and a vain love.
But in the days when Hitler's end was approaching, Eva accompanied Hitler inseparably and reached the end of her life.
On 30 April, the Red Army officially captured the Reichstag, awaiting Hitler only the humiliation of the defeated.
Hitler hated such a fate and looked down on Mussolini and his mistress hanging upside down in Milan.
So at 14:30, Hitler took a gun and went into his private study with Eva.
At 15:30, people heard a loud gunshot from the study, and the guards opened the room and saw the bodies of the two men.
Eva's lips wrinkled, and there was a smell of almond in the air,
It was shown that she died of cyanide poisoning.
Both sides of Hitler's temples were covered in blood, and there is some theory that Hitler shot him in the mouth, causing the temples to explode, while others believe that Hitler shot at the temples, and the bullet penetrated the skull.
We have no way of knowing why Hitler did not choose to commit suicide by taking poison, but instead used a pistol, or perhaps committed suicide with a pistol after taking poison.
Whatever the facts, at least the most arrogant and terrible demonic leader in the history of human warfare had finally ended his sinful life.
Rumors of remains
Before committing suicide, Hitler instructed his secretary, Martin Baumann, to burn his own body.
The reason was to avoid the body of Mussolini being hung up for public display, and more importantly, never let the Soviets touch themselves, even if it was only the remains.
Berlin was in a scuffle, and gasoline consumption was huge and scarce, but Martin Baumann managed to find enough gasoline.
They carried the bodies of Hitler and Eva to the back garden, poured gasoline and burned them on fire.
At first, the flames were difficult to ignite, and Martin Baumann took a roll of paper, lit it, and threw it at Hitler's body before igniting the gasoline.
These last of Hitler's supporters watched the body of the Reich Chancellor burn and raised their arms in a final salute.
The burning of the corpses lasted for several hours, and it was found that the heat distribution in the open air was not evenly distributed, and it was difficult to completely burn Hitler's remains no matter how much gasoline was added.
So at around 18:30 p.m., the burning remains of Hitler and Eva were buried in a crater.
Afterwards, Soviet intelligence agencies found the bomb crater during a search for Hitler's body, from which they found the remains of Hitler, Eva, and two dogs.
They left Hitler's mandible for identification, and the rest of the remains were transferred to a secret location for burial.
After studying the mandible, the Soviets confirmed that Hitler was dead.
But in the international environment at that time, the Soviet Union released different news to the outside world.
Stalin had said in public that Hitler was not dead, which led to a lot of conspiracy theories.
It is rumored that after Hitler was captured in Berlin, he paid a huge amount of gold to redeem his and Eva's lives, and went to Argentina to live in seclusion until he died at the age of 75.
Others say that Hitler fled to a small town on the Border with Brazil and died at the age of 95, and even claims that Hitler was recognized by nurses in his old age at a local hospital.
But overall, these conspiracy theories are too flawed and not highly credible.
In 1970, because the facilities where Hitler's remains were buried needed to be handed over to East Germany, the Soviet Union exhumed Hitler's remains for the sake of "avoiding Hitler's remains from becoming a holy place for the remnants of the Nazis".
It burned down completely and was sprinkled into the Elbe.
In addition, two skull fragments are preserved in the state archives of the Soviet Union and Russia.
The Soviets claimed it was Hitler's skull, but in a 2009 test, American researchers found that the skull belonged to a woman.
In any case, Hitler's influence had faded in 1945 with the red flag on the Reichstag, but the lessons he left behind, especially reflections on war and racial discrimination, deserve to be remembered by all of us.